After what had happened during the day, it was the first night Atlas wasn't going to spend in agony.
Though he was still chained in his cell, he didn't feel like spending the night simply doing nothing. But nothing came to mind; a chained person doesn't have a lot of options for what to do.
Then an idea crept into his mind—a nasty idea he hadn't tried before. What would happen if he tasted his own blood? Would something happen… or would he stay the same?
He flexed his fingers against the iron cuffs, willing them to cause small cuts. Blood welled at the edges of his skin. Hesitant, he touched a fingertip to his lips and tasted it.
Nothing happened.
Still, the act sent a thrill through him he couldn't name. It was dangerous yet fascinating. The copper tang lingered on his tongue, sharp and sweet at the same time. He imagined biting deeper into his hand, sucking more of the warm liquid from his own veins.
The thought gnawed at him, teasing him with something primal, something he had never known in his life on Earth.
But he didn't succumb. He wouldn't allow himself that. Not yet.
Even so, his mind began to fray. Tiny cracks formed along the edges of reason, whispering things he could barely recognize. What if this blood… what if it could do more than the Bishop even knows? What if it could do… anything I wanted?
The chains rattled as he shifted slightly, and he realized how hungry he was—not just for food, but for power, for freedom, for revenge. His stomach twisted, a mix of hunger and a strange craving for his own blood. The thought made him shiver, and he had to force his tongue away.
Still, the taste lingered, and with it a flicker of something darker. A question that had never crossed his mind before: If I start experimenting… carefully… could I learn to bend this power to myself? Could I take control?
He lay back against the stone wall, the chains biting into his wrists and ankles, but a tiny, wicked smile ghosted across his lips. He didn't yet know what would happen. But the seed had been planted.
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The next two weeks were a relentless spiral. By day, Bishop Corvane returned with his instruments of torment, pushing Atlas' body to its limits. Each cut, each burn, each strike became more precise, more experimental, and yet, by now, Atlas' body barely flinched.
His screams grew lower with each passing session, eventually dissolving into silence. The chains dug into his skin, but he no longer felt agony. Pain had lost its meaning.
At night, the dungeon became a different kind of hell. Sleep was impossible. His body, though healed, refused rest. His mind wandered into the darkest corners, chasing thoughts he tried to suppress. Memories of Earth, of normal life, of freedom, became taunting phantoms. And with each reflection, Atlas felt pieces of his sanity peel away.
Yet, there was one strange reprieve: his own blood. Slowly, almost subconsciously, he began tasting it each night. A drop here, a bead there. Each time, it soothed him. Its warmth spread through his veins like fire tempered by ice.
He realized, with a sense both terrifying and comforting, that he could understand it. Its patterns, its pulse, its strange vitality—it answered questions he hadn't thought to ask.
By the tenth night, tasting his blood became ritual. He traced a fingertip along the small cuts in his palms, let the copper tang linger on his tongue, and felt a calm he had never known. The hunger and craving faded, replaced with clarity… though clarity bent toward obsession.
He began to anticipate the Bishop's experiments during the day, not with fear, but with cold calculation. Pain had become meaningless, his body merely a vessel for observation. But his mind—his mind was a storm, a chaos of thought and plotting, of hatred and curiosity.
Atlas understood something fundamental: the blood that healed him, that obeyed him, was his. It was an extension of himself. And if he could wield it, even in tiny ways, perhaps he could regain some control over the world that had chained him so utterly.
Yet that understanding came with a cost. Nights stretched into endless hours of tasting and thinking, delving deeper into patterns and impulses that might have seemed insane to anyone else. Shadows in the cell whispered to him, memories of pain and torment coiling into visions of rage. He no longer knew whether he was awake or dreaming; the line between thought and hallucination blurred.
By the end of the two weeks, Atlas' mind had begun to crumble entirely—but not into despair. Instead, it bent toward something far more dangerous: cold, deliberate cunning wrapped in the veneer of madness. Pain no longer mattered. Sleep no longer mattered. Only the blood mattered.
It was his anchor. His teacher. His solace.
A month had passed, and Atlas was no longer the same. The weeks of physical torment and mental strain had reshaped him in ways no human could endure.
He could feel his blood now. Every drop that coursed through him, every bead that had been shed during the endless tortures—it was alive. Not in a simple sense, but as a network of parasitic cells, sentient and obedient, each one attuned to him.
When his blood touched something living, even the tiniest trace, he could sense it. The warmth of a pulse, the shimmer of vitality, the very presence of life—all of it reached out to him through the parasitic web he had unknowingly created.
He felt a twinge of power with every person that consumed his blood. A small spark of domination, a whisper of potential control. But mastery eluded him. The cells were too fresh in the host, the connection too raw. He could sense them, feel their potential, but could not bend them to his will.
Still, the realization was intoxicating. Even in his fractured, chained state, Atlas understood the terrifying possibilities of what he had become. A drop of his blood could grant life, could heal, could empower—but it could also enslave, corrupt, dominate. Every sip taken by a being, every wound filled by his cells, was a thread of influence waiting to be pulled.
He flexed his fingers in the chains, tasting the copper tang lingering from the night before. The cells pulsed in response, writhing beneath his skin as if eager for release. His mind, already dancing on the edge of madness, began calculating possibilities—hosts, control, power, escape, revenge.
The dungeon walls no longer pressed on him. They were irrelevant. His chains were irrelevant. Even his tormentor was irrelevant.
All that mattered was him, and the parasitic empire contained in his blood, waiting for the day he could command it fully.
And in that moment, a cold, dark thought solidified in Atlas' mind: he was no longer a victim. He was a seed of domination, and the world that had tried to crush him would soon be nourished—and consumed—by him.